The Birth of Giants â Bottom Up or Top Down?

Gravitational

Gravitational Instability Planet Formation • GI generates overdensities but does not guarantee their strongly nonlinear development. • Even if the disk is gravitationally unstable (Q

Gravitational Instability Disk fragmentation Gammie (2001) showed that for fragmentation to set in one needs No fragmentation Gammie ‘01 2D hydro Fragmentation When fragments lose thermal support at the same rate at which they collapse. Isothermal gas effectively has . 3D simulations confirm this general picture . Rice et al 2003